"In an interconnected world, there is a collective responsibility to ensure that the entire system is secure," he said. "Increasingly society will view those business who inadvertently spread viruses or act as platforms for denial of service attacks as failing in their duty to both businesses and the wider community."

In his speech Alexander also urged businesses to take up the little adopted ISO 17799 security standard and he praised private sector initiatives to create trust services, such as tScheme. In case you didn't know allready "tScheme is the independent, non-profit making, industry led body set up to approve these services (of trust service providers.

Busy Bunny

Alexander has been a busy bunny lately. For three months we've seen neither hide nor hair of the ecommerce minister. And then up he pops twice in a week - yesterday to call on BT to reduce consumer broadband charges. Keep this up and we'll have to drop the "elusive ecommerce minister" epithet. ®